Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A Black Swan on the “Great White Way”

By
Chet Williamson

She
is our empress – a singer, dancer, and actress who broke the
color-barrier and shattered the glass-ceiling before such things were
even mentioned. She was a majestic woman from the gauzy-past, whose
illustrious career should make Worcesterites of all stripes proud.

Her
name was Inez Clough, born in Worcester “sometime” around 1870.
In a career that spanned nearly a half century, she helped to pave
the way for blacks to perform on so called “legitimate” stages in
the American Theater.

In
Notable Black American Women, Book 2, edited by Jessie Carney
Smith, the entry reads: “One of the most recent sources of
information on Clough states that she was educated in Worcester in
Boston, becoming a trained concert singer and pianist. She is further
said to have begun singing concerts in Worcester in the 1880s. Little
is known as present of her family and education, and her birth date is a learned guess based on the year she began her professional
career.”

The
bio-notes also report that the reason so little information is known
about Clough is that she is often confused with another concert
singer from the 1900s, also from Worcester, by the name of Stella
Pinckney Clough. This is what we do know about Inez Clough, she was born into one of Worcester's most prominent African-American families. Her grandfather was Peter Rich. Born a slave in Lancaster, MA, Rich moved became one of only three men of colored to own property in Worcester before the Civil War.

Inez' father was Francis A. Clough who own a popular barbershop in town. He was one of the leading men of black Worcester before, during, and after the Civil War. In 1860, he became of the first black men in the country to serve on an American jury. One of Inez' brothers, Benjamin, became Worcester's first black mailmen and sister, Jennie Cora Clough became one of the city's first black school teachers. She was a graduate of Worcester Normal School, which later became Worcester State Teachers and later still, Worcester State University. The school held a reunion in 1886 and Jennie wrote a song for the occasion. The chorus reads: "Welcome, schoolmates! Welcome teachers! Welcome o'er and o'er! We'll hail with joy each happy day. That brings us here once more."

The
Notable Black American Women also notes that, “The path of
Clough’s career can be traced with certainty after she began to
appear on the professional stage. Clough’s first professional
appearance was in the production of Oriental America, in
which she sang in the section entitled “Forty Minutes of Grand and
Comic Opera. Oriental America was the first black show to
appear in a legitimate rather than a burlesque theater.”

Williams and Walker

That
show opened in New York in 1896, before moving to London the
following year. Clough stayed in Europe for another 10 years
performing as a soloist and in musicals. She also worked in the
English theater as a pantomime. She returned stateside in 1906, and
worked in a string of productions starring the great team of Bert
Williams and George Walker.

According
to Notable Black American Women, the production of black
musicals declined after 1909 and Clough sang concerts in major cities
throughout the East Coast. None other than James Weldon Johnson
singled out Clough for high praise of her performances. In the book,
Black Women in America: Theater Arts and Entertainment, Weldon is
quoted as marking April 17, 1917, as “the date of the most
important single event in the entire history of the Negro in the
American theater." On that date, Three Plays for a Negro
Theater, had opened on Broadway with Clough, playing one of the
leads.

For
the purpose of this column, the focus is primarily on Clough’s work
in the shows of Shuffle Along and The Chocolate Dandies,
two productions that put her squarely in the early jazz realm and at
the center of the Harlem Renaissance.

Sissle and Blake

Both
shows were largely the creations of the songwriting team of Eubie
Blake and Nobles Sissle. The team of Blake and Sissle were a winning
combination in the world of early black stage productions.

Eubie Blake

James
Hubert Blake, AKA “Eubie,” was first and foremost, a ragtime
piano player who also composed popular songs and jazz tunes. He died
five days after his 100th birthday and was quoted saying, “If I’d
known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care
of myself.” In 1981, Blake received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom.

Noble
Sissle was a jack-of-all-trades. He was a jazz composer, lyricist,
singer, playwright and bandleader. Incidentally, the great Worcester
trumpeter Wendell Culley was once a member of his orchestra. Sissle
was also a member of the famous James Reese Europe’s popular WWI
369th Infantry Band.

Shuffle
Along was
often remembered for featuring the song, “I’m Just Wild About
Harry,” which later became Harry Truman’s campaign song. But, as
author Brian D. Valencia points out, “it was the popular success of
Shuffle
Along among
mixed-race audiences and the musical's embodiment of all things jazz
that separated it from its predecessors.”

Noble Sissle

When
Shuffle
Along opened
at the 63rd Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921, it “marked the
return of all-black musical shows to Broadway after nearly a
decade-long silence,” said Valencia. “The last successful musical
wholly written and performed by African Americans to be performed
south of Harlem had been the George Walker–Bert Williams vehicle
Bandanna
Land in
1908.”

Note:
Inez Clough appeared in that show as well. She also appeared in In Dahomey with Walker and Williams. This landmark show is considered one of the first African-American written musicals to be presented on the "legitimate" New York stage. Jesse Ship is responsible for the book. Will Marion Cook, along with James Weldon Johnson (author of Lift Every Voice and Sing), Alex Rogers and Williams supplied the music and the lyrics were penned by the great poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Valencia
notes that “Because of the long dry spell that preceded it, Shuffle
Along has
often been called the ‘first successful African-American Broadway
musical,’ a title it cannot claim … . Nowhere was this felt more
than in Sissle and Blake's innovative score, Shuffle
Along's
greatest artistic legacy, described by one reviewer as a 'breeze
of super-jazz blown up from Dixie!'

Unidentified actresses, possibly Clough

"Its fresh, steady supply of
foxtrots, one-steps, two-steps, rags, and the blues induced
involuntary physical reactions from both the performers and the
audience, as the second number concedes: "When they see me
shake, it makes them shiver. / When I do a break, it makes them
quiver. / ... / I'm just full of jazz, jazz, jazz..."

More unidentified dancers in Shuffle Along

Unidentified dancer in Shuffle Along

Sissle
and Blake wrote the music and lyrics. The book was written by a
couple of actors/comedians, Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. The
show is responsible for launching the careers of Josephine Baker,
Florence Mills, Adelaide Hall, and Paul Robeson.

In
the book, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance by

Marshall
Winslow Stearns, Jean Stearns, the writers state that, “Shuffle
Along made its own stars. A cast was assembled from all over the
country, whose talents were known chiefly to Sissle, Blake, Miller
and Lyles: four singers from a Chautauqua circuit; several performers
from cabarets in San Francisco, New Orleans and Memphis; and a few
members from the former Pekin Stock Company.”

Shuffle Along orchestra with Blake on piano

Shuffle
Along ran for more than 500 performances before closing on
Broadway. Gilbert
Chase in his book, America's Music, from the Pilgrims to the
Present said, “After the New York run came 15 weeks in Boston,
a run in Chicago, a nationwide tour that lasted until the summer of
1923. Of course, it played to mixed audiences in white theaters –
which was a triumph for the American people as well as for show
business.”

Josephine Baker, age 16

In
July 1922, Clough joined the road show of Shuffle Along. One
of the highlights of her tenure was the show at the Howard Theater in
Washington, D.C., in which Bessie Smith appeared as an added
attraction. In between various stops along the way Blake, Sissle,
and company recorded songs from the show on a variety of labels.

In
his assessment of the show, Langston Hughes said, it “sounded the
keynote” of the Harlem Renaissance. Commenting on its legacy,
the writers of This Day in Civil Rights History, said,
“Shuffle Along and its subsequent success were large
contributing factors to the flourishing of an era that has since
become known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Blake said: “The proudest day of my life was when Shuffle Along opened. At the intermission all those white people kept saying: ‘I would like to touch him, the man who wrote the music.’ Well, you got to feel that. It made me feel like, well, at last I’m a human being.”

Though
not as successful as Shuffle Along, Chocolate Dandies
was also a landmark production in black American theater. The show
was the creation of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle with assistance from
Lew Payton, who helped to write the book for this musical comedy.

The
Chocolate Dandies opened at The New Colonial Theater in New
York City on September 1, 1924 and featured a cast that included future sensation Josephine Baker, Valaida Snow and Elizabeth Welch. A
young Lena Horne appeared in the chorus line. Singer Ivan Harold
Browning played the romantic lead. Trumpeter Joe Smith was the show’s
featured soloist. Inez Clough starred as the leading lady, Mrs. Hez
Brown, the wife.

An
early “tryout” version of The Chocolate Dandies, first
called Bamville, toured for six months with stops in Chicago
and Boston before appearing in New York. Though fairly successful,
The Chocolate Dandies, received mixed reviews.

According
to the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, “Some critics
praised it as highly as Shuffle Along, but others said that
it pandered too much to the stale ideas and expectations of white
audiences.”

Writer
Nadine George-Graves stated that according to Eubie Blake, "production was headed to Broadway, the producers brought in Julian
Mitchell, a white dance director, to give it a ‘Broadway-touch.’

“This
was a common story at the time,” says George-Graves, “the
enthusiasm for ‘blacks’ contributions to musical theater often
did not translate into economic gains for the artists.”

It
should be noted that a spate of jazz bands, calling themselves The
Chocolate Dandies were spawned in the shows’ wake, namely, bands
led by Don Redman, Sam Wooding, and Benny Carter.

The
book, African-American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates and
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, states: “With a cast of 125, Dandies
was an elaborate musical modeled on the revues of Florence
Zeigfeld and George White … .”

The
book goes on to describe the plot of the show in great detail saying,
“It recognizes the performance legacy of blackface minstrelsy and
also pokes fun at it, as in Sissle’s lyrics for the most overtly
minstrelsy-influenced number, ‘Sons of Old Black Joe:’ ‘Though
we’re a dusky hue, let us say to you / We’re proud of your
complexion.’”

Chocolate
Dandies closed in May of 1925, after 96 shows, at a loss of
$60,000. Still, according to the Encyclopedia of the Harlem
Renaissance, Blake considered the show among his finest work.

Unidentified black actors in blackface with Josephine Baker

Gates
and Brooks Higginbotham also note that, “Sissle and Blake were able
to create a musical comedy that was enjoyable, but also mildly
critical of musical theater’s racist history.” The authors
also note that the cast reflected “some of the greatest performers
of their day” including Inez Clough.

Though
she is highly touted elsewhere and went on to star in a host of
other theater productions, Clough is not singled out for her
performance in The Chocolate Dandies.

Profiles
of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960
stated this about her: “She was an outstanding and versatile
actress-singer of the concert, musical, vaudeville and dramatic
stage, who appeared in several landmark shows during her long
career.”

Clough retired from show business in the late 1920s. She
died of peritonitis on November 24, 1933, in the Cook County Hospital
in Chicago after a long illness. Honoring her memory, the writers
state: “Her career is a demonstration of talent and perseverance in
the face of the great obstacles that were placed in the way of black
actors and actresses. She was instrumental in establishing acting in
the legitimate theater as a possible option for African-Americans.”

Note:
This is a work in progress. Comments, corrections, and suggestions
are always welcome at: walnutharmonicas@gmail.com. Also
see: www.worcestersongs.blogspot.com